


Pacific Rimmer

by VeronicaRich



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Red Dwarf
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:04:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1764775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeronicaRich/pseuds/VeronicaRich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To steal from the person who gave me this idea from Tumblr: "Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer are, to their utmost disgust, highly drift compatible. They of course pilot the Jaeger Red Dwarf."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pacific Rimmer

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a snippet of conversation on Tumblr, about something I only vaguely thought I wanted until I read it. Dedicated to Mzminola, who made me write more than I have in this fandom in months.
> 
> This is unbetaed, so any mistakes are mine. Credit for anything you like is also mine ... as well as the creators' of Red Dwarf and Pacific Rim.

While Rimmer paced, palms pressed together up to his lips, Lister observed with more calm than he felt, “You know what the problem is, of course – we’ve got all the pressures of pilots, and war, without the good parts to make it seem better.”

“There aren’t many hobbies to be had in a post-apocalyptic coastal town being terrorized by interdimensional Godzillas,” Rimmer snapped off, hardly pausing to deliver it. “Golf? A Grand Prix track? Not even a standing telephone pole that hasn’t been ripped in half by those bastards,” he muttered absently.

“Not what I’m referring to.” Lister tossed an oddly new basketball a couple of feet into the air, as he’d been doing for the past ten minutes. “And you know it.” He paused to arch his eyebrows, making sure Rimmer saw him on his pass by.

“Lister, you can have any girl you want, practically, in this entire compound; even in the city,” he said. “Me, not so much.”

Lister snorted and sat up, holding onto the ball. “You could, if you weren’t such a prat. You’ve got all the right parts … just put together kind of strange.” At that precise moment Rimmer was wheeling to pass back by, and Lister admired his ass and fine long legs.

“Strange?” Rimmer repeated, scowling at him. “A cavern for a nose, too skinny, pubic hair in the wrong spot-“ He paused to yank at a handful of the auburn frizz on his head. “And a screwed-up headspace big enough to park a couple of semis.” It was true; Arn Rimmer had tested young for raw talent to qualify him for Jaeger training, but had never been able to develop it because no potential copilot could stand his headspace long enough to achieve drift – and refining skills and strategy was more or less impossible without pair drift. He’d been relegated to janitorial detail after a score of unsuccessful candidates, growing increasingly depressed and bitter for years until, out of desperation following the death of a large number of pilots, he’d been yanked back into drift testing with new talent.

The only one who’d managed not to stagger away to vomit or cry after being hooked up to Rimmer’s head was Dave Lister. Then again, he’d started life as an abandoned infant in a pub, perhaps even more suicidal circumstances than Rimmer’s unwanted origins. Luckily, he’d been reared by a young couple for a while and a caring adoptive grandmother who threatened him weekly with the belt until he finally settled in and decided school wasn’t the end of the world.

But then the world had ended. Or had seemed to, with the return of those fucking Kaiju and so had Lister’s formal education. Some government muckity-muck had gotten their paws on Lister’s aptitude tests a couple of years later and it hadn’t been difficult to lure him out of the mines for a shot at a Jaeger. He’d been tested with a variety of potential copilots, most of whom were too caught up in yearnings for unrealistic glory based on childhood encouragement and expectations to willingly accept a toerag from the wrong side of the blanket. But Rimmer – he’d had no expectations, no gauge of his own worth or talent, and no confidence he could pilot anything more complex than a mop. Their consciousnesses had melded in uneasy alliance; they didn’t like each other, they had nothing in common, but damned if their talents weren’t exactly complementary to only one other person: Each other.

Of course, this didn’t mean their job was easy. The Red Dwarf was a 30-year-old Jaeger hauled out of service thanks to a shortage of ready, new units. All the other pilots had expectations for far better vehicles and refused to hook up to its antiquated systems; only Rimmer and Lister seemed able to get it to do more than lurch and wave. Still, it was unwieldy and the engineers were still blasting rust off parts of it even as they had to pause every couple of weeks for its pilots to take the Dwarf into the bay to help fend off the latest overgrown lizard.

“Some women find that interesting,” Lister informed him, spinning the ball on a couple of fingers to distract himself. “Some _people_ find it interesting too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know half the pilot teams are sleeping together.” He took enormous satisfaction in Rimmer’s open-mouthed look of indignation. “Most of the other half are related, of course. Different kind of bond.”

“I have NO interest in any part of you, millado!”

He didn’t bother pointing out he could more or less read Rimmer’s thoughts anytime they were drifting; either he was really that unaware or he thought if he denied wanting Lister hard enough, it would make the thing true. To be fair, he’d only glimpsed the raw _want_ Rimmer harbored for him a couple of times. The man really was remarkably in control of his emotions even in dire stress, a talent born out of a childhood of having to curb frowned-upon feelings around his family. “It’s not about true love, you git,” he explained. “It’s about more closeness, to be better pilots. About stress relief and relaxation.” _It’s about not seeing me as some toerag you’re better than, you bastard,_ he mentally added – for all that Rimmer wanted him, he also knew the man looked down on his low birth.

“Well, you should’ve tested better with one of the women pilots, shouldn’t you’ve?” Rimmer snapped.

“I might have, if you hadn’t been the third one they tried me with and found out I was the only one who could put up with your neuroses and insecurities,” Lister shot back just as nastily, though his tone was still even. He took a small measure of satisfaction in the brief hurt look that crossed Rimmer’s face. He pushed more. “Me, I could’ve drifted with any number of people, most likely. You’re the one who’s compatible with no one but your own right hand.”

Rimmer looked apoplectic, after he screwed his face up to raise it from mere anger. He said nothing, but turned a brilliant shade of purple before turning and storming out of Lister’s quarters. “So much for talking strategy,” Lister muttered to himself, feeling incredibly guilty for having pushed beyond the bounds of good sense. So many conversations ended this way anymore, it seemed.

********

Rimmer didn’t speak to him for two days, not even when Cat deigned to take fifteen minutes out of his grooming, sleeping, and sex schedule to do his job of talking strategy to the Red Dwarf pilots. “You two are shit at coordination,” he told them bluntly, brushing invisible dirt from a pant leg. “Until you can coordinate in your headspace better without fighting it, you’re going to keep lurching and crashing around in the ocean like you’ve got Parkinson’s.”

Lister cringed, noting with interest that even Rimmer had the grace to look offended. Cat wouldn’t care, though; he just wasn’t correctible, maybe because he wasn’t really human. “Well then, what do you suggest?” he asked.

“Get along better. I don’t know how. Play basketball; watch TV. Mate. Do _something_ that’ll get you more in tune with each other. You monkeys can’t stand each other, and I can see why. But it doesn’t help you,” he pointed out, blithely ignoring any offense he might have given. Judging by how intently he was giving his vest attention, it was the dirtiest thing on base right now. “Doesn’t help in managing that overaged bucket of rust, either.”

“Look, we’ve tried-“ Lister didn’t finish his sentence – the Kaiju alarm went off. Everyone paused to look at each other, even Kryten, who stopped dusting Lister’s international beer bottle collection. “No way,” Lister said, as the third part of the alarm went off – only the first two were used for a drill. “No smegging _way_ , man.”

“It’s only been three days!” Rimmer interjected, glancing in panic at Lister. They knew the attacks had been coming closer together for a while, but there was never any less than two weeks between Kaiju.

“Yeah,” Lister muttered, getting up. “I know; I was there.”

As soon as they showed up at the staging area, Kryten in tow, the droid swiftly located their jumpsuits and connective headsets. Bless him, but the suits had been laundered and patched after their last disaster, and even Rimmer looked like he might’ve been grateful for Kryten’s swift care. Other pilot teams might have several attendants, but none were to the level of what Rimmer frequently referred to as “the bog-bot.” He was careful to do it in a halfway respectful tone, though.

“You two don’t come back, I get that jacket,” Cat reminded them through their headsets once they were suited and being jacked into the Dwarf’s mainframe and their respective piloting chambers. It was the same uplifting message he sent them off with from the control tower each time, and Lister was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to fire them up and bring them back. Cat really did want the one possession he considered covetable from Rimmer, a gorgeous worn leather aviator jacket with wool collar and all manner of buckles and straps. Lister wasn’t sure why the man hadn’t worn it more than once in the year of their acquaintance; the color set off his eyes and the shape emphasized his shoulders and long torso.

“Smeg off,” Rimmer muttered. Lister knew he was nervous, could tell that even without being hooked into his brain just yet. “Why don’t you-“

 _-just try to take it from me when we get back?_ finished Rimmer’s thought inside Lister’s brain as Kryten connected them through the Dwarf. _Moggy asshole._

_He’s just trying to motivate you._

_I doubt that. He’s been after it since forever. Good thing he doesn’t know about the Ray-Bans in the pocket._ There was a faint of humor in the remark, and Lister mentally laughed. Cat couldn’t hear their thoughts like each other could. Then he thought of how Rimmer would look in that jacket and the glasses. _Damn._ Rimmer pointedly said nothing, and Lister could feel him working to seal off that part of his brain just as he responded with nearly the same heat. _You know, we might be better at controlling this thing if you didn’t expend so much energy trying to hide stuff from me. I don’t hold it against you. Feelings, and all._ He deliberately projected what he thought of how Rimmer looked in his tight fight-training outfit and a hint of what he’d like to do about it.

 _That’s all you think about, is sex,_ Rimmer snapped back with disgust.

_That’s all you avoid thinking about. You should try harder to hate me, smeghead._

*********

Once again, the battle was arduous and the Red Dwarf barely managed to escape intact. Even before this point, the Jaeger’s engineers and crew had begun to openly half-joke it had survived so long because it was haunted by the failures of past pilots who kept it buoyed out of sheer meanness. They managed to drag the Dwarf up to the point where the copters could hook in and fly them back to dock and were unhooked before Lister realized there was pain. He followed Rimmer back to their floor of the dorms, listening to the man rant as he limped, feeling something warm and wet inside his pant leg. When they got to Rimmer’s door, he went on past without a word, managing to make it to his own bedroom before stripping down to his shorts and t-shirt without ceremony and discovering a large cut along his thigh. Fortunately, it wasn’t near the femoral; he limped into his bathroom and gathered antiseptic and bandages before turning back to his bedroom. Two steps in, he faced Rimmer.

“Where did you get off to?” he demanded. “You serially ignore me. I was saying that if-“ He looked down and blanched at the blood smearing Lister’s leg. He licked his lips as if he was trying not to be ill, then finally said, “That looks bad.”

“Good job, Sherlock. No wonder Lestrade calls for you so often.” He limped past Rimmer and sat on his bed, picking out a few bandages and setting them aside before opening the tube of antiseptic.

“Are you kidding me, here?” Rimmer huffed and disappeared into the bathroom, coming out thirty seconds later just as Lister was about to apply the cream. “Stop!” he ordered, shaking a wet cloth.

“What?” Lister was exhausted and bruised, and in pain, and generally put out.

“Don’t try to tell me that’s how your grandmother’d do it. I know better; I’ve seen her,” he pointed out. “It’s still dirty, you oaf.” In the midst of being lectured and reprimanded by his copilot, Lister wondered if Rimmer consciously realized he’d gotten down on a knee and was cleaning Lister’s leg. But Lister sure knew it; he felt the long fingers gently rubbing at the blood around the wound, and patting the cut itself, the curly head bent over his thigh. He wanted to push the head lower, watch it bent over other things as he ran his fingers through the soft hair, then pull it up and-

He was surprised Rimmer consented to kiss him in return. He cupped the man’s head in both small hands as their mouths met. He licked Rimmer’s lower lip and tongue, and gripped some of his hair as he spoke through the kiss. “You sure this is okay?”

“Yes.” Breathless, anxious. Lister pulled back enough to see Rimmer blink at him, his hazel eyes darker with lust. He cupped one jaw and leaned forward to kiss the bridge of his nose. “For the record, I like your nose. A lot,” he informed the man, heartened by the small laugh he got in return. “I like a lot of things you’ve got.”

“But mostly my Florence Nightingale hands, right?” he parried, bending his head to go back to work. Lister pulled his hands away to supply the cream and peel each butterfly bandage, watching as Rimmer carefully lined them up straddling the cut and pressed them into place. When Rimmer was done and wiping his hands clean, Lister took the cloth from him, tossed it on the floor with the medical supplies, and invited the man into his arms.

They kissed for a long while, Lister’s hands on his back and his arms and elbows, stroking and squeezing firm muscles. He kissed Rimmer’s nose and forehead and temples, and nuzzled his hair until he was hard as a rock. He leaned back, pulling the man along, until he was flat on his back and Rimmer carefully putting his knees where he wouldn’t be on Lister’s injured leg. Lister cupped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down so their bodies touched, then lined up, as he deepened his kissing and used his other hand to tug at Rimmer’s shirt. Fortunately, Rimmer took the hint and worked with him; it wasn’t long before they were both half-undressed and had fallen back to the kissing.

“You’re cleaner than I thought,” Rimmer mumbled – then pulled back, as if he’d surprised himself with the damning of faint praise. Lister laughed. “All over,” he verified, lifting his hips to give the man a hint. Doing so, he rubbed against Rimmer’s erection, and they moved clumsily, slowly grinding together as Lister appreciated the view – Rimmer’s eyes closing, his mouth open, the whine and soft groans he rewarded Lister with. “C’mon,” he urged, sliding his hands down the man’s back and into his clothes, cupping his bare bottom. “I want to feel _this_.”

“Yeah?” Rimmer’s desperate tone belied the sarcasm he undoubtedly intended. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

“I feel like I’ve waited long enough,” he informed Rimmer, pushing his pants lower. “You’ve been a cocktease for months.”

“I haven’t done a-“

“Just by existing,” Lister corrected him, arching his chin up and giving him a long, slow kiss as he worked the material over Rimmer’s slim hips. “This,” he breathed, getting a hand around his penis. “This is what I’m after. You like it, yeah?”

“Christ, I-“ Rimmer gasped, then closed his eyes and thrust once. “Listy-“ It was a new name, the first time anything had sounded halfway like an endearment in the time Lister had known him. “Feels … so … good,” he panted with slow thrusts.

“That’s it, baby,” he tutted in a low, gravelly voice. “Just let yourself go. You want this; you want _me_. Fuck my hand.” But Rimmer pushed himself up and off Lister, sitting back on his heels, looking down over his copilot speculatively. “There’s something more I want,” he said, licking his lips and sizing up Lister before reaching down to push his shirt up and off, then scooting back to tug down his underpants and throw it all aside.

Once they were both naked, Rimmer was above him again, holding himself to Lister’s left to avoid his injured thigh. They brushed noses and foreheads. Lister raised his mouth but deliberately didn’t kiss him, stopping just short. He kept doing this, teasing, lips barely touching, tongues not at all, until they were both breathing hard, their hips in concert sliding their cocks together. Finally, Lister reached up and pulled Rimmer down into his arms, kissing him fully; Rimmer tilted his head into the kiss with a groan, his arms haloed around Lister’s head and his hands cupping the top of it. He moved his hands down to cup Rimmer’s bottom and shifted so they were grinding more pleasantly, sweaty and slick and nearing orgasm.

“When my leg’s better, I want inside you,” Lister promised him. “More than just your head. You want this, me in you, tight and hot and fuck- Needy.” Rimmer gasped into his mouth, his body stiff as his hips jerked less smoothly. Lister squeezed his ass. “Come for me; now, _c’mon_ , damn it.”

To his surprise, when Rimmer was done, he sat up again and threw his head back, catching his breath, and scooted backward on his knees. He paused, flattened his palms on the bed, and lowered his head until Lister watched his shaft disappear inside that pretty mouth. Lips swallowed and released his sizable penis, but only about half of it. Every time Rimmer pulled up, he’d lick his lips, then descend. After a few times, he left his mouth open, trailing saliva to the tip of the cock, then followed it back down to suck. The first time, Lister nearly came from the sight; it was actually another few minutes, thanks to his iron self-control, and he was treated to Rimmer’s obvious joy at tasting him with each slide down. When he warned he’d be coming, Rimmer sat up, used his hand to pump Lister through, then leaned down and licked some off the head, making obvious swipes with his tongue as he watched Lister’s expressions.

Quickly, Lister threw his arm over the side of the bed and felt around for the bloodied rag. Rimmer took it from him and hastily wiped them both off, still panting, and Lister jerked it away, tossed it, and pulled the man back down onto his body. “Do you know how gorgeous you are?” he asked, playing with his hair. “I mean, Jesus. The women I’ve seen watch you all the time. You’ve got no excuse for not having a harem, Arn.”

“Maybe I do,” he said through a yawn into Lister’s neck. “Maybe I don’t want a harem, Listy.”

He rubbed Rimmer’s back, loving the warm skin. “Do you want me?”

Rimmer paused, and Lister felt him tense up for the first time in all this. “Do you want _me_?”

“I’d take you all the time if I could,” he answered truthfully. “Not your attitude sometimes, maybe; but, hell, that’s part of you, isn’t it?”

He thought Rimmer had started dozing, so it was a surprise a couple of moments later to hear him quietly say, “Yes. I do want you. Along with everyone else on this base,” he added lightly, defensively.

“Well, you can only have me,” Lister joked, deliberately misunderstanding him. He reached for one of Rimmer’s hands and laced his fingers with it, then pulled it up to his mouth. He kissed the top of it. “Better not go off drifting with anyone else.”

********

When they met up with Cat the next afternoon to review strategy once again, the feline put his head up, scrutinized them both with a few sniffs and then nodded once. “Finally,” he pronounced at the lessened hostility. “Maybe you two are ready to start defeating those things now, after all.”


End file.
